BlackMan Time

Archive for April, 2006

A friend and I were discussing this particular topic today: is there a cure for death? She was firmly of the opinion there will never be a cure for death because controlling life, which is what death is, is God’s exclusive domain. I, on the other hand, feel that since man (and technology) have already been navigating around God’s handiwork, that eventually man will find a cure for death.

After a while debating this topic several things – let�s call them facts! – became clear. Let’s list the facts, as follows:-

Fact 1

If there was a cure for death then the rich would have an advantage over the poor because they would get preferential treatment as to who would live and who would die.

Fact 2

Death is God’s (and nature’s) way of controlling population and maintaining the status quo of life. If man really did find a cure for death then chances are he would also tinker with the idea of bringing departed ones back to life.

If that was successful then it would/could have grave repercussions for the living. For starters in some places there’s hardly enough land space for people. Cemeteries are now being forced to buy bodies three or four levels deep on top of one another.

Fact 3

Just like there is not one type of cancer, there are many causes of death. Finding a common cure for death would prove as illusive as trying to find a cure for the common cold. I won’t get technical about the various forms of death there are, but the main ones concern lack of oxygen to the brain and lack of blood flowing through the body. They’ve got fancy technical names for these but this is outside the scope of this thought!

Fact 4

In practically every breakthrough (scientific, practical or otherwise) that actually makes it into public consciousness, there is generally a profit motive. These things, after all, costs bags of money so investors are usually concerned about making back their investment.

They usually talk about ROI (return on their investment), or such nonsense like that. Where would the profit motive be in curing death? What about bringing back departed ones? Who would foot the bill for that?

It strikes me that insurance companies would probably have dilemmas to deal with. Maybe they would save lots of money since they would not have to pay out on death. Maybe it would work out cheaper (more cost effective) for them to change the criteria for issuing policies by giving people a massive discount for taking Cure For Death incentives!

Fact 5

There are so many moral, religious and social issues to deal with! Certain religious groups, especially those which have some kind of connection with departed souls, would probably object to the idea. Others would be in uproar over man’s playing God with people. Ultimately, there would be a split over the issue.

These were just some of the things covered. It came to the conclusion that the best cure for death is actually to stay alive for as long as one can! That means watching what you eat, how you live and controlling as many predictable (or unknown variables) as we possibly can. This may not make for a completely enjoyable life, but it sure might extend one’s existing life!

Ultimately it is also a fact that regardless whether man does eventually find a cure for death, there will always be death in one form or another.

Maybe what may be true in future is that man may find a cure for certain kinds of death, much in the same way that we may currently have found a cure (or treatment) for certain kinds of cancer.

There is no such thing as an impartial view or an objective opinion. The way how human beings are constructed, raised, taught and influenced by life ensures that regardless who we are we are going to be slanting towards one opinion or another. This, to me, is a given which I have seen in action throughout time.

Now, if this is a given and I’m sure there are people better equipped to describe why this is so, then there are a couple of ways we could proceed with the knowledge. We can usually say someone is either with or against an opinion. The so-called “conscientious objector” is a waste of vote because that person comes across as either a coward who is afraid to stick his neck out or someone without an opinion.

In political circles they may even call such person “an undecided” or a “floating voter”.

However, the kinds of opinions I have a problem with are those where the users present declare themselves to be one way but then present their argument in the totally opposite way just because it is expedient to do so. Even worse than this is the opinion which is presented based on lies but so persuasive that the ignorant is liable to believe it and hence infect other innocents with the lie. This is obviously propaganda and whereas it is a very useful tool when engaged in a conflict or war situation, I question its validity when someone is giving the impression they are presenting objective opinions.

There are several reasons why I have massive problems with that. For one, it is dishonest, misleading, disrespectful, too-clever-for-its-own-good and all the rest. It usually puts the person peddling such nonsense in a light where you see them as a misguided fraud.

But, why do people find it so hard to be true? Why is a lie or deception more preferable to some people than backbone honesty?

Is it fear? Being exposed as inadequate? What?! If you have the answer please do drop me a line!

Believe me Easter was the last hing on my mind when I was thinking of thoughts for this article! I was not thinking of how Jesus was, allegedly, betrayed by his good brethren Judas Iscariot. But, it is fairly appropriate given what I am thinking about.

What’s on my mind is the thought that you really don’t know who you can trust sometimes. Old time people, they usually have a saying for everything, and one their little gems say something to the effect of: “keep your friends close but your enemies closer still.”

Other people (old and not so old!) advise we should beware of the people (or other things!) who are close to you! Their wisdom explain that people we hold close as friends are usually the ones who will hurt you the most. This may leave some people in a quandary. Why? Well, the very nature of trust is that you have to invest your faith in someone else and hope that they will respect you enough not to betray that trust.

This Andra is complicated by Bob Marley when he sang:-

“Man to man is so unjust
You don’t know who to trust
Your worse enemy could be your best friend
And your best friend, your worse enemy..”

If you can’t trust the people close to you then who can you trust? For lots of people the answer is easy: they trust only themselves! Faith-loving people put their trust in God while the faithless got a plethora of other contraptions that hold their trust. And even the bible tells us in part that we should only trust God because man is flesh and flesh is weak…

Under ordinary circumstances we don’t have any reasons not to trust friends and those in whom we put our trust. It’s when things go wrong or when you really need the help of your true friends that you see exactly who your friends are.

I like to keep most people away from my heart as much as possible. It’s not something I think about consciously: it happens because I have been that way for a long time. I tend to move alone on most things. In some cases I find this to be a handicap. In others it is a definite advantage. The best thing about it is that I don’t suffer from the problem of worrying whether my best friend is going to stab me in the back!

First, let me ask a question. If you had a house rule that states you do not allow anyone to come into your home and defecate on your sofa (settee if you like!), how would you feel if some brave person did just that when you were not looking?

You’d be really mad as h**l, right? Well, this is exactly how this Time magazine article makes one feel! By the title alone “The Most Homophobic Place on Earth?” it is condemning Jamaica as somehow evil or unreasonable for having laws that prohibits same sex relations.

Jamaica is my home country: my navel string was sliced open there, even if I currently live elsewhere, but I still feel it when organisations like Time go and defecate all over my front room!

My main argument is that Time magazine is condemning not just those who oppose homosexuality but the whole of Jamaica period. It’s tone is very dismissive of Jamaica as being a backward country with its people lawless, hateful individuals, just because it doesn’t open its arms (and legs) to b****men!

There are other countries in the world with similar laws and views about homosexuality. Most Muslim countries for instance, as well as China, Japan and North Korea. Has Time ever ran a similar headline on them? I doubt it.

It is Jamaica’s sovereign right to enforce its laws how it sees fit and neither Time nor any b***y bwoy can tell it how to run its affairs. If someone wants to live a gay lifestyle it is up to them. But if a gay person go to Jamaica knowing full well that it is illegal to conduct such acts that person is no more than a criminal, a law breaker.

The article is a showpiece for gay people: the way it lovingly portrays the life of an anonymous Bryan who alleges that Buju Banton battered him with a board. If you’re into peddling propaganda truth is your best friend only where you can bend it and twist it for your purpose.

Time can get away with making these spurious allegations against Buju because they conveniently don’t identify this Brian. If his story is so important why don’t they identify him in the same way they identify Buju Banton?

In fact on the question of identity the article takes pains to correctly identify by first name, last name and age, every single Jamaican artist they are labelling as homophobic. What’s that all about? It’s simply their way of highlighting these individuals in preparation of further biased stories against them by others who bump into their story. Call it anti-gay profiling if you like.

We hold no torch for homosexuality and neither do we condone wanton violence against innocent people. What we do despise is lopsided articles like Time’s purporting to shed light but in reality darkening up reality with even more sinister lies and propaganda.

I was bemused to read the story of Norman Kember, the 74-year-old British peace campaigner who was captured by bandits in Iraq and held captive for 118 days in Baghdad before being freed in a daring raid by the SAS.

Apparently Kember has been getting hate mail since then because he has not been too upfront or forthcoming with his praise for the SAS, who risked their necks to save his.

Kember, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) was freed along with two other colleagues. During subsequent press conferences he thanked families, members of the public and reluctantly thanked the SAS during a radio interview “although I don’t agree with their methods,” he said.

This is the part that gets me: how can you be so uncooperative about giving praise to the people without whom you might well be a dead corpse? I don’t know what branch of Christianity Kember is a member of, but I’m sure thanks, praise and even forgiveness are all part and parcel of the tools in a true Christian�s toolbox.

I am perfectly sure if a racist white person (don’t you be making smart remarks about “is there any other kind!”) had risked his life to rescue mine, I am pretty certain I’d show my immediate thanks and gratitude. This is regardless of how much I may otherwise despise that person, their methods and beliefs.

Call me a little old fashion but I think and believe that wherever respect is due it should be given and greater love has no man (or woman) than to risk (or lay down) his life for you. Even if under normal circumstances that person might have even taken your life himself!

Even the bible shows us that God loved the world so much he sacrificed his only son so that believers can be saved. Maybe Kember should reflect on this and be glad that the SAS didn’t leave him in the hands of people who may have well taken him to meet his maker much sooner than expected.

Maybe you should just call that my Easter message!

Regardless of your personal view, actress Angelina Jolie is currently probably doing more to put Africa on the map than the collective efforts of all other world leaders put together!

This is a very bold statement, I know, but while she is there with Brad Pitt, apparently to give birth to her now due first biological child, Africa is getting world coverage and most of it is positive.

Big respects has got to go to Jolie who has chosen Africa as the place for the birth of her child. Then again she has many reasons why she loves Africa! For starters she once referred to the Africa nation as “the cradle of human kind” and it was there the actress and activist first took custody of her adopted Cambodian son Maddox there back in 2002. That same year she was in Namibia for the filming of the international feature movie on refugees, ‘Beyond Borders’, at Swakopmund.

One year ago she holidayed there with Brad Pitt, letting the world know that reports of a romance were true. She then adopted another baby in Africa, Ethiopian Zahara, last summer. Now, sometime in the next few weeks she will give birth there!

While it is not known if Pitt has previously visited Namibia, he has visited South Africa and Ethiopia, and shares Jolie’s humanitarian concerns and love of Africa.

Much of the focus of their humanitarian commitment is directed at the continent, as well as Asia. Together they constantly advocate the plight of refugees and those caught up in conflict on the world stage. For example, in addition to Namibia’s Osire refugee camp, Jolie has visited refugee camps in Tanzania, Congo, Thailand, Ecuador, Sri Lanka, Kosovo and Ingushetia.

This is all good, yet some may question why am I going on about a white do-gooding Hollywood celebrity couple. The answer is simple: they are taking the time to care, love and cherish the same things and people that I care about and they are doing it not as a publicity stunt, but because they want to. They are trying to make a difference in a world that doesn’t care.

In my book that makes them a cut above the rest and I am sure others, inspired by their example, will follow suit.

Selah.

Even if you don’t believe in coincidences or conspiracy theories you simply have to wonder when certain things happen in synchronisation with other things!

Take for instance the defeat of Centre Right Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, in the general election by Centre Left coalition leader Romano Prodi on Wednesday, April 10, 2006. Nothing wrong with that until you hear that the very next day the Mafia’s Godfather Bernardo Provenzano, was arrested by police after spending 43 years on the run for numerous offences.

This was must my personally thought and didn’t think it significant until I went online and checked and saw that Italy was similarly abuzz with speculation over the extraordinary timing of the arrest also!

Of course Berlusconi’s time as leader was filled with many allegations and suspicions that he had close ties within the Mafia, charges that he has always vehemently denied, but Provenzano’s release seemed to confirm suspicions, opponents say.

Provenzano had been nearly captured on six occasions, but had always escaped after being mysteriously tipped off.

“Perhaps some powerful people withdrew their protection” leading Italian newspaper, La Republica said. Piero Grasso, the chief anti Mafia prosecutor, said Provenzano had been “untouchable” until now thanks to “support from politicians and businessmen”.

Provenzano was captured in an isolated, unheated and rundown three-room stone farmhouse barely a mile from Corleone, his home town, which inspired the Mafia family name in The Godfather films and books. He had evaded capture so often since going into hiding in 1963 that he earned the nickname “The Phantom of Corleone.”

The only phantom left to capture is the truth whether Berlusconi was indeed shielding Provenzano but there will be zero interest in that, now that the big Mafioso is captured.

I actually don’t have to go out of my way to see signs of racism or racist behaviour on the streets of Britain!

Take last Friday (April 7, 2006) for example. I was meeting a woman friend for lunch at a top Yorkshire hotel and we’d agreed to meet by a nearby shopping mall. The mall is one of those Olympic sized affairs you see popping up everywhere, usually complete with attached multiplex cinema.

Anyway, there I was waiting outside this complex when I saw a representative of the Automobile Association giving out leaflets to passers-by to entice them to take motor vehicle road cover. Everything looked normal until I realised that all of his passers-by he was giving leaflets to were white. I stopped and thought maybe I was mistaken so I observed more closely.

Lo and behold I watched for another 10 minutes as Asians, Africans and other people of ethnic shades darker than white pass the AA Man. He did not offer them the chance to join his illustrious organisation. By contrast every white person who passed got the “Have you got AA cover ma’am/sir?”

Maybe he was a little shy and felt awkward approaching non-white people, but this thought was just me being liberal!

I was simply incensed by Mr. AA Man’s behaviour and went to stand over by where he could see me. When our eyes met I held his stare then glowered at him before kissing my teeth, cutting my eye and walking off in disgust, deliberately.

Afterwards ideas came to me about what I could or should have done. Maybe I should’ve confronted him directly and asked him if it was official AA policy to act in this way, to exclude Black people. Maybe the AA already had too many applications from Black people, I tried, again, to rationalise things.

Maybe confronting him was the right thing to do, but I didn’t really want to cause a scene prior to my lunch date. So, I did the convenient thing and left it, resolving that I’d put down my thoughts on the incident on paper instead!

Well, what do you think?

I have watched with some bemusement, the media’s growing fascination with Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie’s romance with actor Brad Pitt. In some ways it is tragic. In other ways it is quite comical.

The tragedy comes in the fact that the media looks like it will go any distance and to any lengths to get any story, telling photo or titbit to fulfil what they perceive to be the public’s desire for information. It was this very same glutton for information which killed Princess Diana some years ago.

The comedy comes in watching the supposedly spurned Jennifer Aniston’s reaction to her former beau Brad Pitt’s love and devotion to Jolie. Anniston has even had Oprah fighting in her corner apparently declaring her disapproval of Pitt to dump her “friend” Anniston. In the midst of it all a detached viewer would have a hard time separating truth from reality.

New York’s Metro has just published a fake photo of Pitt and Jolie with the couple’s (so far unborn baby) on the cover. They’ve done it with computer trickery. The end result is very realistic looking but it shows great desperation in order to sell newspapers.

Other publications and media, perhaps with less money, imagination or both, just seem to make up stuff and attrib it to “a close friend said”. I have yet to see, read or hear a direct quote from either Pitt or Jolie on many of the things that have been written about them.

Maybe that’s the best thing, because with so much lies, fabrications, suggestions and fake stuff going around, who is going to believe the reality anyway?

Last night (April 9, 2006), I watched a BBC documentary which focussed on how British companies discriminate against older employees.

The program, “Must Have Own Teeth“, looked at the extent of age discrimination in the workplace and revealed how some employers blatantly favour younger over older job applicants and get away with it. And other discrimination, such as ethnicity (skin colour), gender and sexual orientation, were also factors working against some applicants.

A couple of reporters went under cover, over the phone to recruitment agencies, pretending to be bosses of companies looking to recruit staff. They stated their requirement that applicants must not be under 40 and must be white. Most of the agencies they tried said they understood the request and could supply such candidates.

In another segment the program showed that most of the UK’s top companies have less than 10% – in some cases even as low as 1% – of the workforce over 55. Some companies, especially those involved in IT and New Media industries had a much younger age group than say companies in the retail sector.

Wrong Side of 40

What all this means for anyone who finds themselves “on the wrong side of 40″ is that they face potential difficulties getting employment. Their choice is either set up their businesses, lie about their age or sit at home do nothing and let the state take care of them. It was truly depressing piece of television! But how has this situation come about?

Britain’s age profile has been changing for some time. Around 36% of the labour force is aged 45 or over and it is estimated that by the year 2015 almost 40% will be in that age group, while 16 – 24 year olds will make up 17% of the labour force. These grim statistics come from the Code of Practice for Age Diversity in Employment.

With people living longer and retiring earlier, the UK, in common with many other European countries, is shouldering a great economic burden. While this could be offset in part by encouraging older people to remain in the workforce and by tackling age discrimination in recruitment, it is apparent this is not happening. In most cases it is the older workers who are fired or released first should a company need to shed staff.

The government’s own Performance and Innovation Unit has recommended that it should set out its vision of the role of older people in society. In a report entitled ‘Winning the Generation Game’, it says that age discrimination legislation should be introduced if the Code of Practice on age diversity is unsuccessful. It also suggests that the minimum age for pension eligibility should be raised from 50 to 55.

Some progress has been made. As of October 1, 2006 it will be unlawful for firms to discriminate against prospective applicants on grounds of age. But that will probably not stop doing so using gender, religion, sexual orientation or even colour as their criteria.

If you fit any of these criteria, especially if you are someone over 40, brace yourself for getting a raw deal!